As a Econ major minoring in Math at Berkeley:
(In my humble opinion of course…)
- A lower division course here at Berkeley is only slightly harder than its CCC equivalent. The difficulty jump that transfers experience is primarily due to the increased depth in material between lower division and upper division courses rather than the jump from CCC to UC. I also found that this lower / upper division difficulty jump is significantly more pronounced for STEM majors than Humanities majors.
- Us transfers are absolutely lucky to be able to take our "weeder" courses at the CCCs. The competition for grades in most weeder courses I've seen is insane with professors introducing artificial curves or ramping up exam difficulty just to separate students when final grades come around. Getting into some of the difficult majors with GPA requirements is much easier as a transfer than as a freshman admit.
- I find that with technical courses here at Cal, more often than not, the top grades are pretty much handed out even before the first day of class because there is a very distinct split of students with extensive prior preparation and minimal to no preparation. The "A" students here seem to know the course material from outside learning (MIT Courseware, Itunes U, UC Webcasts, Youtube, etc.) or practical experience (Job, Internships, Personal Projects, etc.) even before taking the course and the rest of the students who step into the first day with little to no outside preparation are just fighting for B's, C's, and (sometimes) D's.